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Looking for input: Best material for mid range cone

I had a surprise last night when I switched speakers in my system.  I've got a few pairs, but had been listening mainly to some Ascend Sierra 1, which have a polypropylene cone with a soft dome tweeter in a bookshelf design.  Anyway, I've got a pair of Tannoy Precision 6.1's, and swapped them in.  

The sound was noticeably different.  Piano sounded better, vocals had a finer quality as well, and the whole sound seemed a little more lively.  Now the Tannoys have silver interior wiring, a titanium tweeter in a coax design and are only rated for 75 watts. The cone material is some kind of pressed paper fibre.  And they are voiced to somewhat push the midrange.  But the sound was compelling.

I'm just wondering about cone material because some old Paradigms with Polypropylene were really not up to snuff, but they were quite old.  Any thoughts?
213runnin
ctsooner
2,104 posts
 
And s many of the composits do sound better than what we've had if implemented properly. 
ohlala
993 posts
 
ATC addresses off-aixs frequency response as well as dynamics with their CLD fabric cone. I was thinking about them with respect their successful low distortion, high-dynamic speakers:

"An ideal speaker system should have phase response linear with frequency, which in simple terms means that all frequencies produced by the driver reach the listener’s ear at the same time. This eliminates partial cancellation of certain frequencies due to their arrival at the listening point out of phase. Phase shift is a result of resonances in the drivers, as well as a consequence of the design of crossover network filters.

Careful driver design assures an amplitude response free from any broadband (low Q) resonance. Conventional design wisdom tells us that a stiff speaker cone is ideal for wide on-axis frequency response. However, poor off-axis frequency response and multiple resonances that color the sound make a non-flexible cone less than optimum. The conventional approach to resolving this problem is to highly damp the motion of the cone, but this dramatically reduces the efficiency of the speaker.

One of ATC’s approaches to eliminating resonant peaks in the driver is to use a heavily damped fabric cone with sufficient structural integrity to sustain high power levels. Constrained Layer Damping (CLD), an ATC innovation, uses a “sandwich” cone construction, with a damping layer molded between two lightweight fabric cones. As the cone assembly flexes, the damping material absorbs the shear energy between the two layers, offering dramatically more efficient damping than conventional methods. This design reduces harmonic distortion, minimizes resonances that affect on- and off-axis frequency response, and, since it offers less loss than standard damping techniques, dynamic headroom is improved.

The combination of mechanical damping and electrical damping from the power amplifier keeps the system tightly controlled, providing well defined bass and midrange detail."

http://www.transaudiogroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ATC_Engineering_Goals_and_Approaches.pdf
avanti1960
225 posts
 
the most transparent midrange drivers i have heard are made of aluminum.  but their properties usually need one incredible crossover to tame the break up distortion and rapidly rising response.   see the joseph audio speakers with infinite slope crossovers.  
mikelavigne
1,274 posts
 

my favorite speakers use ceramic-sandwich mid-range drivers. it’s very light and stiff, and i have found that it’s speed and transparency mates well with ribbon tweeters for a one-piece sound.....and a seamless mid-range-tweeter is super critical to my ears.

other driver materials seem to miss my preferred proper balance of ’life’, ’detail’, and ’tonal purity’. either they are too up front, too hard or too dull sounding. these are subtle things but for many years i’ve found my personal sonic viewpoint best with ceramic.

like any driver type, getting the most out of the ceramic mid range requires adapting it properly as it’s so transparent it can ring and such if not executed with great care. it’s not plug and play. but it’s ceiling seems to be higher when done right.....to my particular ears.

YMMV, my 2 cents, and all that stuff.

kosst_amojan
2,095 posts
 
@helomech 

I've got speakers with those fancy Focal F cones. They sure as hell weren't the reason I bought them. They do what they do well. That's the bottom line. 

A lot of people put an obscene amount of emphasis on the tonal purity a driver or it's diaphragm material are capable of. To me that's a secondary consideration because I don't listen to much music where the recording engineer seemed obsessed with the tonal presentation. The space and ambience tends to be a higher priority. I bought the Focals because they're exceptional at recreating a space. Is that what flax does? Seems that way. Polyglass isn't exactly space age material though, being little more than a paper cone spritzed with micronized glass, and it does imaging better than plenty of aluminum drivers. 

Worth pointing out, Wilson is getting great results from well built paper, some say better than the Focal W cones they used in many of their products. The speed of sound through paper can approach speeds near what you see in steel if you make it right. W cones are limited in that. On the other hand, I've never heard of anyone complaining about the results Magico gets with their hyper-exotic construction and materials. 

Ultimately, I think too many people in this hobby develop strange obsessions with diaphragm materials when the world is full of exceptions to their opinions. Can a metal tweeter be smoother than a soft one? Yeah. Can paper outperform carbon fiber and Kevlar? Yeah. Can flax do better than paper? Sounds like it from where I'm sitting. Can paper humiliate everything I've ever heard? Good chance it can. I think it pays to be agnostic about such things as materials. 




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